Steve Jobs Spies on Customers by Hiding in Bushes, Former Employee Says

A story published on The ZURBlog claims Apple’s CEO, who is currently on medical leave of absence, makes a habit out of hiding in the bushes nearby Apple retail stores to get a glimpse of customer behavior.

According to Louis Corso, a former employee at the Apple Store Stanford, “We would find him hiding behind the bushes or around the corner outside, peering inside to see what was going on."

“We would go, ‘There’s Steve! Everybody play cool.’ We thought he was evaluating us. It was nerve-wracking.”

However, as the story goes, Apple retail staffers at the Palo Alto store got Steve all wrong.

He was actually spying on customers, to see how they interact with the store, getting into their mindsets.

“He was directly observing how customers acted around his products and teasing out what they believed about his company. He was staying in touch, albeit from a slightly comic distance,” according to the report.

The blog praises Jobs for his approach.

Rather than pay off some fancy research firm, Jobs took matters into his own hands, and watched customers’ mentality up close, trusting his gut, and his gut only on the decisions to follow thereafter.

Needless to point out, it worked! Apple has some of the most iconic (if not the most iconic) retail stores in the world, with revolutionary services, like the Genius bar, to boot.

Jobs also has Ron Johnson as SVP of Retail to provide his own visionary guidance in what needs to be done to get people inside a store and have them walk out with an iPod, a Mac, or a tablet computer.

As noted above, Apple’s CEO is dealing with some health problems lately (not that there was one soul on the planed that didn’t know this already), and some reports say he isn’t likely to return to Apple.

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, is expected to take the CEO role once Apple makes a public statement in case Steve Jobs’ illness is indeed as serious as some physicians claim.